Life under Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to return to the old Soviet standards this month after a Chechen newspaper was closed following an embarrassing comment by the editor-in-chief in the presence of the Russia strongman. Worse yet, people actually laughed when Belkis Dudayeva, the editor-in-chief of Kadyrov’s Path, asked a question that began with “Thank God that Chechnya has now become a region of peace and prosperity…”
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We have previously discussed the disturbing fondness of some Russians for the memory of Josef Stalin — one of history’s greatest tyrants. Villagers in Georgia have taken that hero worship a step further by storing a statue commemorating Josef Stalin in his (appropriately named) birth town of Gori and are planning a monument to the dictator. Activities celebrating the “happier times” under Stalin ignore the hundreds of thousands of Russians, particularly intelligentsia, killed under this orders and the millions lost due to this policies. Gori however appears happy to have its favorite son in the tyrant’s chair. The story this month truly filled me with disgust and it was particularly poignant that these Georgians would use the Christmas season to honor one of history’s mass murderers.
It appears that “debonding” is now both a permissible legal as well as dental procedure. The Iowa Supreme Court handed down a controversial ruling on Friday that a dentist, Fort Dodge Dr. James Knight, could fire an assistant due to an “irresistible attraction.” Melissa Nelson was fired because Knight and his wife viewed her as a threat to their marriage. Justice Edward Mansfield wrote for a unanimous court that such a firing does not violate the Iowa Civil Rights Act even if the employee does not engage in flirtatious behavior.
Before we commercialized and infantilized every aspect of our culture, we used to understand the power of symbols. Our government was regarded as a benevolent uncle named Sam bidding us to do our part. Our soaring strength and spirit of ever climbing higher was embodied in an eagle. A bell in Philadelphia announced to the world that while our society was far from perfect it remained free of the Old World’s pretenses and encumbrances. A statue in a harbor welcomed even the wretched to a land promising both opportunity and hard work. Symbols define our ideals about life, desires, and even ourselves.
I don’t know about you but I was certainly happy that I woke up this morning. For a few years now there has been great speculation that the world was going to end yesterday. As I fell asleep about 1:00pm last night it was with knowing that in Mexico it was three hours earlier and so that the dread prediction of the world’s end by the Mayan Calendar still may have been possible. The whole idea was a blatant misrepresentation of Mayan belief and hoax-like, yet that didn’t prevent many from making this non-story into yet another way to frighten people. Frightening people with made-up nonsense seems to be a human trait and certainly has been exploited throughout history for one sort of gain or another.
We 
Oakland, California is in the midst of a crime wave and remains the fifth-most crime ridden city in America. Nevertheless, the city fired one-fourth of its police department — over 200 officers. However, in the latest example of the lunacy of public subsidies for professional football and baseball teams, the city is forking over $17.3 million for the National Football League’s Oakland Raiders and Major League Baseball’s Athletics. These owners are racking in huge profits but Oakland and other cities continue to subsidize the teams despite studies (
There is an interesting and tragic case out of Northern Illinois University in Dekalb where 22 members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity have been criminally charged in the death of student David Bogenberger, 19, after a frat event with excessive drinking. It is one of the largest such prosecutions, if not the largest, that I have seen for a hazing or frat drinking death. The question is whether this is a matter that should be addressed on the criminal opposed to the civil docket as well as school proceedings for expulsion.
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Belgium is considering an expansion of its decade-old euthanasia law to allow minors and Alzheimer’s sufferers to seek permission to die. The Socialist Party’s proposal appears likely to be approved to remove the age limit (of 18 years) for electing euthanasia.
Yesterday, a great man in this country passed: Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye. He was a GW grad, a war hero, and the U.S. Senate’s most senior member. Through the years, I had numerous occasions to sit down with Inouye and I liked him a great deal. He was to put it simply: a good man. He cared about people and was deeply worried about the direction of our political system for both parties. He was 88 and he will be missed. His last word was reportedly “Aloha” — both “hello” and “goodbye” in traditional Hawaiian.
Lawyer Juan Carlos Noriega was apparently a bit surprised by an August 2 article that appeared on Huffington Post. The biggest surprise is that he was listed as the author. The lawyer from Panama is suing Huffington Post, which he claims not only ran the article under his name but then failed to respond to his efforts to have his name removed. He says that the article criticizing the federal government has jeopardized his relationship with the Department of Homeland Security and is suing for $3 million and a full retraction.
It takes a lot to get most of us to give a Tinker’s damn for the homophobic extremists at the Westboro Baptist Church. However, the people may be close of doing just that. Citizens are passing around petitions to have the church declared a hate group and strip it of its tax exempt status. This type of political movement targeting an unpopular vote raises all types of alarms for civil libertarians. Declaring certain groups as “hate groups” by popular demand smacks of majoritarian dominance. It also reaffirms the concerns, which I have ![praying_hands[1]](https://i0.wp.com/jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/praying_hands1.jpg?resize=125%2C150)
The murder of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary has spawned an array of commentary from calls for